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Hey Esteban here, Many of the things I enjoy the most , about joining a project is having the freedom to contribute to build its DNA .

Harold and I have totally different backgrounds, however we agree on some points that are certainly relevant to what we want to be our operations and towards the actions we take on the road to success.

In our case ingenuity, daring, commitment, the desire to facilitate society to achieve goals, grit, vision and the fact that money is not a driver nor an end , but rather a happy externality, are things that have been printed in our project´s DNA from the very beginning.

Yesterday as religiously every Friday, we met, and discussed very specific aspects about what and how we are going to achieve , and if there is one thing we are sure is that those who are going to join us in this odyssey are going to stand by those values too, that is the way in which the culture of this company was born and shaped , and we firmly believe it has the genes to adapt itself to the future,

Harold was commenting on the latest changes, which I found incredible and I just makes me want to have a slid right now.

Now, I am about to start writing our strategic plan; running the risk of biasing or frequency illusion bias, we feel that the gear parts are shifting and that the wind is blowing favorably in our direction.

The first month of The Slid Project is gone. February has just started and I feel personally satisfied with the progress we’ve made so far. Besides, as Esteban mentioned in a previous post, there are some things happening in our country that are hard to believe for their good timing and impact. That really inspire us to continue with this effort.

Right now we’re focusing in research and design, but we’re also trying to make some progress in the organizational part of the project (v.g. finances stuff, legal stuff, etc.)

This always makes me think of a big old audio mixer, and now we’re trying to raise all of them at the same time. Manually and in perfect time.

Hey Esteban Here. Few days ago I was very thrilled about Costa Rica’s new law. Today, after reading and carefully analyze, I believe even though we are moving in the right direction we have still some work ahead. Turns out we are tax exempting the electric cars and removing weekly restriction. Authorities aspire to have 37000 new cars in 5 years, which of course is a good step towards our green goal, won’t do no good to solve the parking problems. One thing that encourages us is even if this new law will help the conflictive traffic, it will not solve the parking spots problem.

Anyway worry not, we are working really hard in order to solve it for good. Stay tuned as we have interesting news coming up.

Hi, my name is Esteban Herrera. I am Harold’s partner, and I collaborate with the Slid Project. Last year Costa Rica accomplished the milestone of work with renewable energy for 300 days in a row. Yup, you read it right. Achieve 100% of renewable energy is possible, and we ticos did it, in many ways. Yes, we are a green country, we still have much work ado ahead, but yes you could tell we have been blessed.

We have been selected the happiest country of the world, we are Franklin Chang’s crip, we do not have army, and we have exported millions of neurons worldwide. We have such good conditions, but it is our deepest duty to protect the environment, we have to lead by example and be the fiercest Nature supporters.

Today I would like to congratulate Costa Rica’s government and people, because we are taking the right steps in the right directions, and let me recognize when good deeds are done and goals been accomplished. Our government signed the Ley de autos eléctricos , or Electric car Law which foster a good attitude towards clean energy vehicles by tax exemptions, and additional benefits such no restriction within GAM (Great Metropolitan Area).
Even if I live in San Jose downtown and have to commute everyday it certainly feels good to be able to live, where more than 2.3 million tourist a year people decide to come for vacations.

We have decided the protagonist of this story is definitely a vehicle. Before this project started, we only had a blurry idea about the problem that ultimately motivate us: it has to do with how difficult it has become to travel on the streets of the Great Metropolitan Area of our country, Costa Rica.

We still have a lot of research to do to correctly back up our observations, but you can ask anyone actually living here that going out to work and back has been increasingly frustrating in the last decades. Some of the main causes are traffic jams, car accidents, lack of parking space, shabby streets and car theft. We know many of those issues may be seen as part of normal life in modern cities all around the world, and we also know this is an enormous problem to tackle, but we want to do something anyway. There has been several measures tried in our country, like vehicular restrictions, bike lanes, campaigning for patience and courtesy on the road, etc., but none of those seem to work. Still, something has to be done.

This week we’ve been very busy discussing the postulates of the project, which in turn could impact a lot of decisions later. This concerns many areas: design, production, image, sales, finances and, of course, the very core of the idea…

Reducing fatigue, stress, noise, smog, waste of fuel and unpunctuality seems to us a very serious matter for the people, not just from our country but for us modern humans. However, we’re trying to keep our plans realistic.

By the way, Costa Rica is currently at the top of the Happy Planet Index rankings, and we think that’s a powerful idea that we could strive to cultivate: making that happiness more consistent, tangible, durable and hopefully even shareable with other countries.

Maybe a little Costa Rican spirit is what the technology of the future present needs.

The first week of our project is gone and left us with only 51 remaining to complete our goals for the Slid. I know it’s actually a lot of time, but when you’re doing something you really like, time flies. That’s its nature.

We spent most of this week putting firstthings in order, discussing our goals, methods and drafting the “master plan”. So far we have a name, a logo, a domain, a website and a space in some social networks. We worked on a business model canvas. We also have started making concepts of the product in 3D, but they’re far from ready for the public. Please have patience.

As we have a clear idea of the time setting of the project, we also began plotting our calendar. We probably consider this our main tool. It just makes sense: having a timeline clearly defined by a complete calendar year help us understand the magnitude of the given time frame, and hopefully, also to make better decisions about the timing of the events in this story.

The Slid Project is an idea that I, Harold (nice to meet you!), convinced my friend Esteban we could try to pull out in the course of one year.

This is not the first project we work together. Some time ago we had a micro-brewery and until now we were working in some related hobby/business in our spare time. However, I believe 2018 could be a special year for this project. We see many reasons why it’s important to at least try, but I admit there’s something else in the equation and it’s not a reason but something from the heart.

If this were our last chance to make a small contribution to the world, what could that be? The beers, mead and all that are ok. But I insist: if you really had just one last year to work some kind of miracle in the world as you know it… what could that be? And how do get there?

So this was the deal: for 2018 we stop everything else we’re doing and try to focus on something bigger. Something that makes us proud (in a purposeful way). I already had a hunch what could make a good candidate for the project…

Then again, I admit the first proof this idea wasn’t completely crazy was Esteban agreeing to it.

Welcome to The Slid Project! We’re very glad you could make it here (how did that happen, by the way?). We’re just about to begin a tale about something we currently don’t know exactly how it is. But what we do know is that its story will be worth telling…

This is about something many people around the world experiment almost every day: traffic jams and parking problems. In fact, it’s hard to clearly define our antagonist, as it is composed of several situations tightly packed together: lack of space to move, wasted time, wasted fuel and an array of heavy mental states were the first few that crossed our minds. So this is the modern monster our project has the mission to curb.

We call our hero “Slid”. We imagine it as a vehicle capable to slide through the traffic, just like bikes and motorcycles do. But we came to think those vehicles still lack some requirements to become the real solution to the conflict, particularly in certain situations. Thus, the aim of The Slid Project is to propose a solution based in our perspective of the conflict and its nature, instead of reviewing or reinforcing the measures that are currently being applied in our cities. We want something different.